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Ezekiel, and all those sumptuous things under the law were made to signify the inward beauty and splendour of the Christian church thus governed. And whether this be commanded, let it now be judged. St. Paul after his preface to the first of Timothy, which he concludes in the 17th verse with Amen, enters upon the subject of this epistle, which is to establish the churchgovernment, with a command: "This charge I commit to thee, son Timothy: according to the prophecies which went before on thee, that thou by them mightest war a good warfare." Which is plain enough thus expounded: This charge I commit to thee, wherein I now go about to instruct thee how thou shalt set up church-discipline, that thou mightest war a good warfare, bearing thyself constantly and faithfully in the ministry, which, in the first to the Corinthians, is also called a warfare; and so after a kind of parenthesis concerning Hymenæus, he returns to his command, though under the mild word of exhorting, chap. ii. ver. 1, "I exhort, therefore;" as if he had interrupted his former command by the occasional mention of Hymenæus. More beneath, in the 14th verse of the third chapter, when he hath delivered the duties of bishops or presbyters, and deacons, not once naming any other order in the church, he thus adds; These things write I unto thee, hoping to come unto thee shortly (such necessity it seems there was), but if I tarry long, that thou mayest know how thou oughtest to behave thyself in the house of God." From this place it may be justly asked, whether Timothy by this here written, might know what was to be known concerning the orders of church governors or no? If he might, then, in such a clear text as this, may we know too without further jangle; if he might not, then did St. Paul write insufficiently, and moreover said not true,

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for he saith here he might know; and I persuade myself he did know ere this was written, but that the apostle had more regard to the instruction of us, than to the informing of him. In the fifth chapter, after some other church precepts concerning discipline, mark what a dreadful command follows, ver. 21: "I charge thee before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, and the elect angels, that thou observe these things." And as if all were not yet sure enough, he closes up the epistle with an adjuring charge, thus: "I give thee charge in the sight of God, who quickeneth all things, and before Christ Jesus, that thou keep this commandment:" that is, the whole commandment concerning discipline, being the main purpose of the epistle: although Hooker would fain have this denouncement referred to the particular precept going before, because the word commandment is in the singular number, not remembering that even in the first chapter of this epistle, the word commandment is used in a plural sense, ver. 5: "Now the end of the commandment is charity;" and what more frequent than in like manner to say, the law of Moses? So that either to restrain the significance too much, or too much to enlarge it, would make the adjuration either not so weighty, or not so pertinent. And thus we find here that the rules of church-discipline are not only commanded, but hedged about with such a terrible impalement of commands, as he that will break through wilfully to violate the least of them, must hazard the wounding of his conscience even unto death. ****

Since church-government is so strictly commanded in 'God's word, the first and greatest reason why we should submit thereto is, because God hath so commanded. But whether of these two, prelaty, or presbytery, can prove itself to be supported by this first and greatest rea

son, must be the next dispute: wherein this position is to be first laid down, as granted; that I may not follow a chase rather than an argument, that one of these two, and none other, is of God's ordaining; and if it be, that ordinance must be evident in the gospel. For the imperfect and obscure institution of the law, which the apostles themselves doubt not ofttimes to vilify, cannot give rules to the complete and glorious ministration of the gospel, which looks on the law as on a child, not as on a tutor. ****

[Bishop Andrews and the primate of Armagh had contended, that the original episcopacy is derived partly from" the pattern prescribed by God in the Old Testament, and partly from the imitation thereof brought in by the Apostles." To this Milton replies:]

The whole Judaic law is either political (and to take pattern by that, no christian nation ever thought itself obliged in conscience) or moral, which contains in it the observation of whatsoever is substantially and perpetually true and good, either in religion, or course of life. That which is thus moral, besides what we fetch from those unwritten laws and ideas which nature hath engraven in us, the gospel, as stands with her dignity most, lectures to her from her own authentic handwriting and command, not copies out from the borrowed manuscript of a subservient scroll, by way of imitating as well might she be said in her sacrament of water to imitate the baptism of John. What though she retain excommunication used in the synagogue, retain the morality of the sabbath? She does not therefore imitate the law, her underling, but perfect her. All that was morally delivered from the law to the gos pel, in the office of the priests and Levites, was, that there should be a ministry set apart to teach and disci

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pline the church; both which duties the apostles thought good to commit to the presbyters. And if any distinction of honour were to be made among them, they directed it should be to those not that only rule well, but especially to those that labour in the word and doctrine. By which we are taught that laborious teaching is the most honourable prelaty that one minister can have above another in the gospel; if, therefore, the superiority of bishopship be grounded on the priesthood as a part of the moral law, it cannot be said to be an imitation; for it were ridiculous that morality should imitate morality, which ever was the same thing.

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The impossibility of grounding evangelic government in the imitation of the Jewish priesthood; which will [appear] by considering both the quality of the persons, and the office itself. Aaron and his sons were the princes of their tribe, before they were sanctified to the priesthood: that personal eminence, which they held above the other Levites, they received not only from their office, but partly brought it into their office; and so from that time forward the priests were not chosen out of the whole number of the Levites, as our bishops, but were born inheritors of the dignity. Therefore, unless we shall choose our prelates only out of the nobility, and let them run in a blood, there can be no pussible imitation of lording over their brethren in regard of their persons altogether unlike. As for the office, which was a representation of Christ's own person more immediately in the high priest, and of his whole priestly office in all the other, to the performance of which the Levites were but as servitors and deacons, it was necessary there should be a distinction of dignity between two functions of so great odds. But there being no such

difference among our ministers, unless it be in reference to the deacons, it is impossible to found a prelaty upon the imitation of this priesthood. ****

[Bishop Andrews had moreover asserted, that Christ being both king and priest, was typified alike by the Jewish king, and by the high priest: hence, that if his coming abolished the one type, it must also the other. Against this notion Milton argues thus:]

But where, O Bishop, doth the purpose of the law set forth Christ to us as a king! That which never was intended by the law can never be abolished as part thereof. When the law was made, there was no king: if before the law, or under the law, God by a special type in any king would foresignify the future kingdom of Christ, which is not yet visibly come; what was that to the law? The whole ceremonial law (and types can be in no law else) comprehends nothing but the propi- tiatory office of Christ's priesthood, which being in substance accomplished, both law and priesthood fades away of itself, and passes into air like a transitory vision, and the right of kings neither stands by any type nor

falls.

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The reason therefore of imparity in the priests, being now, as is aforesaid, really annulled both in their person and in their representative office, what right of jurisdiction soever can be from this place levitically bequeathed, must descend upon the ministers of the gospel equally, as it finds them in all other points equal. ****

Jerome, the learnedest of the fathers, hides not his opinion, that custom only, which the proverb calls a tyrant, was the maker of prelaty; before his audacious workmanship the churches were ruled in common by the presbyters and such a certain truth this was esteemed, that it became a decree among the papal canons compiled by Gratian. ****

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